Make It Your Goal to Leave Sad

Welcome to Military Move Phase Two: The Calm Before The Storm

There is a strange phase in the middle of every military move.

Let’s call it Phase Two: The Calm Before The Storm.

By this point, you've already rage-purged every closet in the house. The library books have been returned. The kids have been unenrolled from school. Half the condiments in the refrigerator have been thrown away because nobody is moving an open jar of mayonnaise across state lines. We are a mobile society, not savages.

You are close enough to pack out day that ordering anything online feels reckless.

Will it arrive before we leave?

Will it arrive after we leave?

Will it spend six months touring the continental United States before finally showing up at our next address looking more well-traveled than we are?

But you're not yet close enough to start living like squatters in your own home. The pictures are still on the walls. You're still eating off real plates. Nobody has packed the coffee maker. The good scissors are still accounted for. We are living in a fleeting and magical moment.

It's a fragile two-week window of relative peace.

Like that scene in every disaster movie where the ocean suddenly goes calm.

Everyone knows something terrible is coming…you just can't see it yet.

I've noticed that during this phase, something happens to me: My heart starts taking a farewell tour before anyone has actually left.

The things that annoy me about our current duty station suddenly fade into the background. The things I love move to center stage.

Last night I sat in a lawn chair staring up at the New Mexico sky.

The boxes aren't packed yet, but my feelings apparently are.

The stars were ridiculous.

The kind of stars that make you wonder if every other place you've ever lived was operating under some sort of brightness restriction.

"It'll be a long time before we see stars like this again," I said to my husband.

The sadness in my own voice surprised me.

Because for most of my military life, I've been focused on what's next.

The next assignment.

The next house.

The next adventure.

The next place to explore.

And honestly, that's not bad advice when you're young in this lifestyle. Military life offers experiences most people never get. New places. New friends. New opportunities.

There is plenty to look forward to.

But after nearly three decades of military moves, I would give a younger me very different advice.

When you arrive somewhere new, make it your goal to leave sad.

Not miserable.

Not devastated.

Just sad.

Everywhere we go, young military spouses ask me the same question: "What's been your favorite duty station?"

Usually, it's followed by a list of places they've loved, places they've hated, or places they're about to move.

They're often looking for reassurance.

Validation.

A guarantee that the next stop will be a good one.

But after twenty-eight years, I've become convinced that what makes a duty station great has surprisingly little to do with the duty station itself.

Yes, housing matters.

Schools matter.

Commute times matter.

The proximity of Costco or Trader Joe’s matters more than many of us are willing to admit publicly.

But those things rarely determine whether a place becomes meaningful.

People do.

The neighbors who become family.

The coworker who turns into your closest friend.

The couple you meet at church.

The parent you sit beside at swim practice.

The family you accidentally spend six straight hours talking to around a backyard fire pit.

The people are what make the place.

And building those relationships requires something many of us find uncomfortable: Vulnerability.

You have to introduce yourself.

Accept invitations.

Invite people over.

Join things.

Show up.

Risk awkwardness.

Risk rejection.

Risk caring.

And that's where many military families get stuck.

Because we know what happens next.

We know that eventually somebody moves.

Or we move.

Or everybody moves.

We know every friendship comes with an expiration date stamped somewhere on the packaging. We just don't know where, or when, the date is.

So some people make a decision—conscious or not—to protect themselves.

To avoid the pain of goodbye, they avoid the risk of hello.

Which sounds sensible until you realize you've successfully avoided both heartbreak and friendship.

I understand the temptation.

At this stage of our military journey, we've been told to expect frequent moves. If we get more than a year somewhere, it feels like finding extra fries at the bottom of the bag.

The thought of building deep friendships only to pack up and leave them behind every year is exhausting.

But then I think about the alternative.

A military life that is transient is unavoidable.

A military life that is isolating is not.

One of the gifts of this community is that military families understand things nobody else quite does. The uncertainty. The deployments. The missed holidays. The excitement. The frustration. The constant goodbyes.

We don't have to explain the mixed emotions because everyone is already living them.

And those of us who have been around long enough know something important: 

The pain of leaving is not evidence that you did it wrong. 

It's evidence that you did it right.

Nobody cries over the places where they never put down roots.

It means you invested.

It means you connected.

It means you built something worth missing.

So that's my advice.

When you arrive at your next duty station, make it your goal to leave sad.

Fill your table.

Open your home.

Say yes to invitations.

Become a regular somewhere.

Learn people's names.

Let them learn yours.

Build a life that hurts to leave because it was so good to live.

Because one day you'll sit in a lawn chair under a sky you'll never quite see again.

You'll drive away from people you'll wish lived next door forever.

And your heart will ache.

That's not failure.

That's success.

The goal was never to leave without tears.

The goal was to build a life worth crying over.